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'We don’t want pity, we want action'.

A young student, 12, al-Mawasi

For the past two years since I stepped into a proper school. Two years since I heard the school chime at Khawla Bint al-Azwar school, took my seat and answered questions during my favourite class. Sometimes I still clearly recall the familiar scents and noises: powder from the board, sharpener leftovers, cheerful echoes. But my educational institution is gone; it was targeted shortly after the war began. My books were burned, and several classmates lost.

I was in fifth grade on 7 October: the concluding day I attended classes. That early hours, warning alarms sounded through the passageways. Some pupils sobbed, others gripped each other. Our teacher tried to calm us, but even her voice trembled. I remember wishing for a normal day; instruction, intermission, a verse presentation. Instead, that day marked the end of my previous existence.

Hostilities have claimed innumerable aspects. But the most painful deprivation of all is schooling, because without it, our prospects disappear.

Now I reside with my mother and father, siblings and female sibling in a packed refuge in Khan Younis. The temporary partitions flap in the wind, providing no climate control. We line up for water and food. Energy access is fantasy and privacy doesn’t exist. Optimism seems delicate.

At darkness, I look up at the stars through the openings of my temporary home and question if my friends see the identical heavens. Some contact me when they are able, saying they yearn for classes and have kept their previous journals; like relics of a vanished time. I feel ashamed because I’ve misplaced all of mine.

I once dreamed of entering the education field to support young residents learn, even when existence was challenging. Now I dream of being a writer – to draft, to speak and to demonstrate the world what it represents to be a child in Gaza. I want to share our experiences of fear and hunger, but also bravery. Because even here, amid fatality and debris, our expressions persist.

When there’s some internet, I attempt learning online. Sometimes, I visit a modest shelter where volunteers educate us math and Arabic. The instruction is limited – the power fails or the airstrikes begin again but in these instances, I feel alive. I remember who I was: the student who loved numbers and poems, who was convinced learning could change the world.

The war has taken so much; our dwellings, learning centers and kin. I grieved for my paternal relative, his partner, and their children. I forfeited my cherished hometown, my previous home, which is only ruins now. But the toughest sacrifice of all is learning, because it represents the forfeiture of tomorrow.

To the international community, I say this: don’t let our dreams die. We seek no sympathy, we want action. Gaza’s children are entitled to literature, schools and security. Schooling is not optional, it is a basic right. This region is not merely devastation; it is minors who continue to aspire amid unmanned aircraft at evening. It is my account and I will continue writing, even if all I have left is a damaged writing tool and a fragment of ripped sheet.

'Students ask: "Teacher, are you safe?"'.

Naglaa Weshah, forty, teacher in a refugee camp

I have been teaching in this area for more than a decade. Initially in that urban area, then in Deir al-Balah, and now in this refugee settlement in the heart of the region. Before the war started, I used to teach several sets of about 40 students each, almost two hundred forty individuals eager to learn.

Teaching them was my vocation and delight in life, and I still recall the gleam in a pupil's gaze when a new idea clicked; the type of instance every teacher cherishes.

I always believed instruction should be full of life. My teaching space was a area of amusement, aesthetics, and motion. We created cartographic art, performed past occurrences, and turned lessons into stories.

Laughter always filled the room as inquisitiveness displaced fear. Certainly, even in earlier times, young residents were always scared. My classroom was a secure location but after 7 October, the situation transformed.

My educational institution became a refuge for households running from the explosives. Shortly after, it was attacked and entirely ruined. There are hardly any educational facilities still erect in this area now. For this period, everything has been abnormal. The hostilities has destroyed every facet of our reality: security, residences, schools, dreams. Anxiety and sorrow are ever-present realities.

Numerous of my learners are now deceased – minors who spoke of dreaming of medical professionals, creatives, and instructors. They were refused even the entitlement to survival. Those who remain experience starvation, relocation and exhaustion – and yet, they still hold onto the will to learn.

At times, when the online access permits, I get in touch with a few of them. They write questioning: “How are you, educator?” We share brief words, abbreviated teaching, tiny sparks of connection amid the chaos. They ask if situations will ever revert to standard. I tell them I am uncertain.

All over Gaza, educators, volunteers and charities attempt instruction wherever possible: in temporary structures, ruined educational areas, or packed refuges. Education has become an demonstration of perseverance, a way to declare: “We persist.” And so long as we continue learning, we will remain.

Numerous of us are also guardians. I am a mother of {three|several